How would converting more battlecruisers into carriers affect later Royal Navy aviation?
Short answerIt could produce a large fast-carrier force and restore naval control of the Fleet Air Arm early enough to change prewar aircraft procurement.
NotesConverting Courageous, Glorious, and additional large hulls would give the Royal Navy a sizeable group of fast carriers before the next purpose-built generation arrived. That fleet would require more aircraft, pilots, maintainers, and a stronger naval aviation institution. This pressure could return the Fleet Air Arm to Royal Navy control around 1929 or 1930 rather than 1939. Naval control of procurement from the early 1930s would allow one or two generations of aircraft to be specified around fleet requirements before the Second World War. A later comment notes that the 1918 transfer was contested repeatedly and could have been reversed at several points before 1939. The effect is larger than the extra hulls themselves: carrier numbers alter organizational authority and the design of the aircraft that eventually fight from them.